


certitude

by kaci3PO



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 09:46:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6074599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaci3PO/pseuds/kaci3PO
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Cisco, you can make me fly.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	certitude

The only shocking about the latest metahuman menace to Central City is that it took so long for one of them to take flight. When Cisco realizes this while fixing their suit after Barry’s first, disastrous encounter with Magenta, he almost wants to laugh. Then he glances over to the hospital bed Barry’s in while Caitlin’s does her own brand of repairs to the suit’s occupant and he swallows it.

“How am I supposed to fight somebody who can fly?” Barry asks helplessly. “I can get some serious air time if I run up something tall enough, but that’s a band aid for a bullet wound.” The metaphor’s not too far off, considering that she sent a compacted ball of metal straight through Barry’s upper chest. They’re all just lucky she missed her target.

“We’ll just have to figure out a way to keep you airborne,” Harry says. “We’ve already destroyed the laws of physics together once, haven’t we?” There’s a small smile on his face, something which is becoming less of a rarity now that he has Jessie safe on Earth-1.

“I don’t think we can break them like this,” Barry sighs.

“Actually,” Iris says slowly. “I… I think _I_ might know how.”

It’s a little insulting how quickly everyone in the room turns to look at her, their eyes all widened at the shock of her statement. She frowns at them and says, “I know I’m not a physicist, but this is actually really simple. Barry, how do airplanes stay up?”

“Basically by creating enough downward force to keep them in the air.”

“Wouldn’t work,” Harry cuts in. “The mass of an airplane is spread out horizontally, and for Barry to run he has to be vertical.”

“I wasn’t finished yet,” Iris says firmly. “Do _any_ of you watch YouTube?” They all shake their head except for Harry, who looks like he’s about to ask ‘what is YouTube’ so Iris continues before he can. “I saw it in a video. If two sound waves are generated on top of each other–” She holds one hand above the other to demonstrate. “– the place where they meet creates– I forget the word.”

“Interference,” Harry says. He’s staring at her like he’s never seen her before.

“Yes, that,” she continues. “And whatever’s trapped in the interference levitates.” She lowers her hands and turns to Cisco. “Easy.”

Cisco raises his own hands, backing away from everyone’s stares. “Woah, hey now, let’s not– I haven’t– I only just started being able to control my waves, I can’t be trusted to–”

“Yes, you can,” Barry says, and the grin on his face makes Cisco’s heart ache. “Cisco, you can make me fly.”

“No,” Cisco says, almost laughing at how absurd it sounds. “I can’t do that, Barry. I haven’t even practiced outside of laboratory conditions. I’m not–”

Barry crosses the room in a flash of lightning and takes Cisco’s face in his hands. “You can do this, Cisco.”

“Barry…” If he sounds helpless, it’s because he is.

“You wouldn’t let me fall,”Barry assures him.

“Cait, back me up here,” Cisco begs. “You’re always the voice of doom and gloom.”

“The scientific principles _are_ sound…” she says thoughtfully.

“Damn it, Caitlin,” Cisco huffs. He pulls himself out of Barry’s embrace and starts to turn away entirely. “I can’t do this, I can’t–”

Barry grabs him and he’s being kissed within an inch of his life, right there in front of everybody in the cortex. Their relationship is still new, nowhere near the bar for gross PDA that Caitlin and Ronnie had been kind enough to set for the rest of the mere mortals to aspire to.

There are a few assorted groans and he’s pretty sure Harry hisses ‘get a room’ in his tetchiest of voices, but all he hears is Barry’s soft, “I trust you,” whispered quietly in the tiny space between their mouths before he kisses Cisco again, this time somewhat more briefly and a lot more chaste.

***

“Barry, I can’t do this!” Cisco shouts into the headset concealed under his ski mask. “You’re going to get killed and it’s going to be my fault and I’m too young to be a widow!”

“Yes, Cisco, you _can_ ,” Barry reassures him for the fifteenth time as he dodges attacks from Magenta at hyper speed.

“What if I hit you instead?” Cisco says anxiously. “None of us even thought of that. Remember what it did to you when Reverb attacked you? If I miss…”

“So don’t miss,” Barry says evenly.

“Barry, you can’t possibly trust me to–”

“You’re the only one I trust to do this,” Barry says, and then Magenta drags him into the air and lets go.

For one, panicked second, Cisco just watches him fall, and then adrenaline finally floods his brain.

He throws his right arm out, focusing all his will on creating enough lift to keep Barry in the air. Barry shouts into his ear words that Cisco barely understands, words that come to him in fragments as his brain fights to keep him from focusing on anything except keeping Barry airborne, and then Barry makes contact with the outermost edge of the wave and goes flying back into the air.

Cisco’s almost sure he’s done it until he finally makes out what Barry’s actually been saying – “You have to catch me in the interference or I’m trying to fight in a bouncy castle!”

“Shit,” he mutters, “shit shit shit,” and he raises his left hand. He watches Barry fall again, waiting until he makes contact with the wave before splitting his focus between both hands, screaming with the mental effort of projecting two of them at an even frequency. He forces his eyes open, only just registering that he’d even closed them, and finds Barry quite stable in the in between. 

“Holy shit,” he says, feeling awed at his own creations.

“Freak out later,” Barry reminds him. “You have to move me. I don’t have ranged attacks.”

“Barry,” Cisco says warily. “I’m not sure–”

“I love you,” Barry cuts in. “And I know you love me. You’re not going to let me get hurt. Now take me to her.”

Cisco turns his whole body, hands steady as they hold Barry in the air, and he feels his knees go weak as Barry moves through the air toward Magenta. 

***

When Barry finds him twenty minutes later, flat on his back in the field and looking dazed, Cisco is grateful that he doesn’t act smug or tell Cisco that he told him so. He carefully picks Cisco up in both arms, more bridal carry than anything, and holds him like he is something precious and delicate. Under normal circumstances, Cisco would protest such treatment; he’s not weak, and if anything he’s just proven that he’s a hero, too.

But Cisco is exhausted and more than that, he feels like he could fly apart at any moment, like his consciousness has been pushed to its limits and he’s pulled muscles he didn’t even know he had. Instead of being annoyed about it, right now Cisco’s just happy to be in Barry’s arms.

“Hold on to me,” he whispers, and Cisco tiredly locks his arms tight around Barry’s neck, burying his face against Barry’s shoulder as he flashes them back to Cisco’s apartment. Lightning dances around him as Barry undresses him out of his thrown-together disguise and changes him into one of Cisco’s favorite t-shirts (one of Barry’s, just this side of too big for him and therefore unspeakably comfortable). Suddenly he’s in bed and Barry is sitting beside him on the bed, petting at his hair and smiling at him like he’s the most perfect thing Barry’s ever seen. Cisco highly doubts that, but he appreciates the thought.

“You were amazing tonight,” Barry tells him. “I am _so_ proud of you.”

“You could’ve died,” Cisco mumbles, and rests his head on Barry’s knee, the better to have his hair played with.

“Never,” Barry tells him. “You think after all this time, I don’t know you? We could be in that situation a million times, and every single time you would catch me.”

“I know,” Cisco admits softly. “Did you mean it when you said you love me?”

“Of course I did. And you love me too.”

“How did you know that, though?”

“Because you caught me.”


End file.
